Nahuatl
La nueva app móvil Yoltok
The new Yoltok mobile application
Yoltok es un sitio web multimediático y una aplicación móvil que ofrece una serie de recursos útiles para el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de la lengua y la cultura náhuatl. El repositorio de recursos de Yoltok incluye un diccionario, una sección de palabras del día, una sección de cultura y recursos educativos de vídeo y audio. El proyecto Yoltok está siendo desarrollado por el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (LACS por sus siglos en inglés) de la Universidad de Michigan. Este proyecto se encuentra en constante evolución y es por ello que buscamos incluir nuevas funciones y ampliar los recursos (guías de enseñanza, planes de estudio, etc.) que se ofrecerán por el sitio web y la aplicación. Si usted quiere conocer los recursos y contenido que se encuentran disponibles actualmente, haga clic ici para visitar el sitio hoy. También puede interesarle esta presentación, en la que se analizan los objetivos y las características del proyecto.
Yoltok is a multimedia website and mobile app that provides a number of useful resources for learning and teaching about Nahuatl language and culture. The Yoltok resource repository includes a dictionary, a words of the day section, a culture section, and educational video and audio resources. The Yoltok project is being developed by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) at the University of Michigan. It will grow to include new features such as teaching guides and lesson plans. Click here to visit the site now. You may also be interested in this presentation which discusses project goals and features.
Un nuevo sistema para la escritura náhuatl
A New System for Writing Nahuatl
En el semestre de otoño de 2015, unos compañeros y yo tomamos una clase de nivel principiante de náhuatl moderno de la Huasteca ofrecida a través del Centro de Estudios de América Latina y el Caribe (LACS) de la Universidad de Michigan en Ann Arbor, estado de Michigan, EE.UU. El Prof. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, del Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) de la Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas en Zacatecas, México, impartió la clase a través de las tecnologías web. Durante el semestre, yo desarrollé un abugida eficaz para la escritura náhuatl en mis fichas y cuaderno ... leer más ...
During the Fall semester of 2015, I and several colleagues took an introductory class in modern Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl offered through the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, and taught via web technologies by Prof. Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz of the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Zacatecas, Mexico. During the semester, I developed an effective abugida for writing Nahuatl in my own notes and flashcards. I now use this system for all my hand-written notes and field work ... read more ...
Herramienta para cambiar ortografías de náhuatl: NOCE
NOCE: Nahuatl Orthography Conversion Engine
La aplicación móvil Yoltok utiliza una herramienta de software capaz de convertir entre varias ortografías del náhuatl. Esta herramienta se llama NOCE, que es la abreviatura del inglés Nahuatl Orthography Conversion Engine. Internamente, NOCE mantiene un registro para ortografías morfofonémicas como la ortografía Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen (ACK), y un segundo registro para ortografías puramente fonéticas como la de la Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). El software utiliza un conjunto de reglas alófonas para convertir entre varias ortografías profundas y superficiales. Puede leer la documentación de NOCE aquí.
The Yoltok mobile app internally uses a software library capable of converting between various Nahuatl orthographies. The library is called NOCE, which is an abbreviation of Nahuatl Orthography Conversion Engine. Internally, NOCE maintains one register for morphophonemic orthographies like the Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen (ACK) orthography, and a second register for purely phonetic orthographies like the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) orthography. The software uses a set of allophone rules to convert between various deep and shallow orthographies. You can read the documentation for NOCE here. Currently this documentation is only available in Spanish.
Aztec Glyphs Project
In 2017, I collaborated with Dr. Stephanie Wood of the University of Oregon and Dr. Gordon Whittaker of Göttingen University to spearhead the creation of an Aztec Glyphs cataloging and analysis project. Here is a link to the talk I gave at our workshop in March, 2017.
Proposal: A crowd-sourced multimedia app of modern Nahuatl variants
There are somewhere between 1.5 million and 1.7 million speakers of Nahuatl in Mexico today, making Nahuatl the most widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico. However, multiple forces have contributed toward a rapid decline in usage of Nahuatl by native speakers in many parts of Mexico and the language is now widely considered endangered. The ideological policies of castellanización that began after the Mexican Revolution engendered conflictive and racist attitudes against indigenous language speakers. More recently, patterns of globalization, internal migration to urban areas, and climate change are accelerating shifts in language usage and language prestige, especially among younger generations of Nahuatl speakers. While the modern world presents numerous challenges to the vitality of indigenous languages in general, it also provides opportunities for new and creative responses. We propose the creation of a crowd-sourced mobile app of modern Nahuatl variants that will help speakers to learn and revitalize Nahuatl, preserve local cultures against the onslaught of hegemonic state colonialities, and communicate indigenous narratives and worldviews in their own words. Click here to read the draft proposal. Nota bene: some aspects of this proposal have been implemented in the Yoltok mobile app.
Tai Tham ᨲ᩠ᩅᩫᨾᩮᩥᩬᨦ
Hariphunchai Tai Tham Font Project
โครงการฟอนต์อักษรธรรมล้านนา “หริภุญชัย”
For centuries throughout the northern regions of Southeast Asia in the Xishuangbanna (西双版纳 สิบสองปันนา) region of Yunnan in China, in the Lanna (ล้านนา) region of Northern Thailand, in the Shan state (รัฐฉาน) of Myanmar around the city of Kengtung (เชียงตุง) and in Laos, the Tai Tham script (อักษรธรรมล้านนา หรือ ตั๋วเมือง) has been used extensively to preserve important religious and cultural texts. In Buddhist monastaries throughout the region, texts in Sanskrit, Pali, and local Tai (傣 ไท) languages were traditionally written on palm leaf manuscripts (贝叶经 คัมภีร์ใบลาน) or folded sa paper (พับสา) ... read more ...
Hariphunchai: Designing a Tai Tham Unicode Font
A talk about the Hariphunchai Unicode Tai Tham font project that I gave at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Leipzig, Germany, in April, 2014. Click on the YouTube video of the talk below, or see the slides here.
Attestations of Tai Tham orthographic forms
This is the beginning of a database of images from printed and hand-written Tai Tham sources. This database is being developed to assist the Unicode.org Tai Tham working group and to provide attestations of orthographic forms for use in a new edition of the Hariphunchai font. See the attestations of Tai Tham orthographic forms here.
Key Curry
Key Curry is a web application and set of web components that allows you to easily type many world languages and specialized orthographies on the web. Key Curry makes it easy for language advocates and web developers to develop specialized keyboard layouts or input method engines to provide support for orthographies of minority languages or for other specialized orthographic tasks. An introduction to Key Curry is available here. Key Curry comes with numerous key maps and input method engines, including a relatively intuitive method for the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), several methods for African languages, and a number of methods for East Asian languages. Key Curry also has an input method for typing my Nahuatl orthography. You may access Key Curry here.
Font Guide
This is a now rather out-of-date guide to Unicode-based fonts for free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems. Preference was given to high-quality vector fonts released under SIL International's Open Font License (OFL), the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL), and similarly open licenses. Although this document focused on fonts that worked well on free operating systems a few years ago, nowadays these fonts will work well on any modern operating System, including Windows and Apple OSX. Access the Font Guide here.
Unicode Primer
Computers assign numbers —called code points— to represent letters. Prior to Unicode, there were hundreds of national and ISO standards in existence for the encoding of modern language scripts. Many of these legacy encodings were limited to 256 ( i.e., 28 ) code points. Back in the day, this resulted in numerous problems. A major problem was that 256 code points were frequently not enough even for a single language, much less multiple languages. A second rather obvious problem was that code points set aside to represent letters in one national or ISO encoding would unavoidably be re-used to represent completely different letters in some other national or ISO encoding. This resulted in unreadable emails, mangled web pages, and garbled databases. Fortunately, Unicode came along to solve the problems of multiple encodings by assigning unique code points to the letters and ideographs of (nearly) all of the world's modern language scripts and commonly used symbols. Nowadays it is much rarer to encounter problems, but many software developers are well-aware of issues that still occur and some of the hoops one needs to jump through get things to work the way they should. Although this Unicode Primer is dated, it still contains valuable information that may help you avoid pitfalls. Access the Unicode Primer here.
Fontaine
Fontaine is a command-line utility that I wrote a few years ago for the Open Font Library project. Fontaine displays key meta information about font files, including but not limited to font name, style, weight, glyph count, character count, copyright, license information and orthographic coverage. One of the most useful aspects of this utility is its ability to tell you what is included and what is missing from a given font. This is especially useful for scholars, graphic designers and anyone who needs to know about the specific coverage of a font before they decide to use it in their projects. Read more about Fontaine here.
Comparative Morphology of Red Oak Taxa in Landscape Ecosystems in Lower Michigan
some of the morphological characters measured in the study.
The taxonomy and range limits of scarlet oak, Quercus coccinea Muenchh., and northern pin oak, Q. ellipsoidalis E.J. Hill, in the Lake States have been much debated, and recent authors continue to arrive at different conclusions regarding the segregation of these two taxa. The problem is compounded because Q. ellipsoidalis has also often been confused with northern red oak, Q. rubra L., and black oak, Q. velutina Lam. An ecosystem approach was used to investigate the morphology of the two well-characterized taxa, Q. rubra and Q. velutina, in relation to the poorly-characterized Q. coccinea in southeastern and northern Lower Michigan. Q. ellipsoidalis is hypothesized to be a northern, smaller-fruited race of Q. coccinea. To test this hypothesis, characters thought to be most conserved in evolution -flowers, fruits, and terminal buds- were examined in order to establish baseline references for distinguishing Q. coccinea, Q. rubra, and Q. velutina. Populations of each taxon were then examined to document differences along a south-to-north gradient. Access the thesis here.
Madeline
Madeline is a pedigree visualization software program designed to handle large and complex pedigrees with an emphasis on readability and aesthetics. There are three versions: ① the original command-line version which has many unique features for handling pedigree data and produces output in the PostScript format; ② Madeline 2.0 Pedigree Drawing Engine, a command-line program with many new and useful pedigree drawing features, including scalable vector graphics (SVG) output and options to facilitate integrating Madeline into web applications; and ③ a new fully interactive version being developed for tablets and handheld devices (which also works just as well on a desktop computer).
Although the new version for tablets and handheld devices is still just a prototype, it sports some great features that we think will revolutionize pedigree drawing within clinical and medical research settings. Check out the video below for a tour!
Tategaki 縦書き
Text on computers is almost always displayed in horizontal rows which are read from top to bottom. However in East Asia, text was traditionally written in vertical columns from top to bottom, with progression from right to left. This style of writing is called tategaki 縦書き in Japanese and zongpai 縱排 in Mandarin Chinese. The tategaki style remains quite popular today in printed works in Japan and even in newspapers in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. What would it take to achieve vertical text layout in a web page? Back in 2011, I decided to do an experiment to answer that question. Read more here.
Vanessa
Vanessa is a sophisticated database application that I wrote for the International Center for Automotive Medicine (ICAM) at the University of Michigan Health System. The application is used to track and report a variety of data related to patients injured in automobile and vulnerable road user (VRU) accidents. The application has many unique features, including the ability to automatically generate schematic maps of accident victims’ injuries directly from medical injury report lists (example at left).Click here for more information.